When my wife recently left for a trip to visit her folks I did what any self-respecting adult would do and queued our mutual Netflix list with all the movies and shows only I would want to watch.  Little did I know that one of the shows I haphazardly added would send me on a compulsive two-week nerdathon.  When I received the first volume of the Thundercats I watched the whole disc in one sitting, then the second, and then the third, hardly bothering to shower or feed myself during the self-induced hermitage.  I was quickly captivated again by a show I loved so much as a kid. I let the geek fest begin, but did not go as far as this:

::Facepalm::

 or this:

Lion----oh?

or even this:

Rawr?

 But I would not put past myself to buy this collection on a drunken night of Ebay shopping (much to the chagrin of my wife):

The True Fan Shrine

I never had the Cat’s Lair or the Thundertank, but I did have my fair share of Thundercat toys and seeing this picture is an instant reminder of the numerous hours I spent bashing them together…fighting or making out, I can’t quite remember which anymore.  

While rewatching all the episodes from an adult perspective I cannot quiet recall another program that combined all the elements of action, mesmerizing animation, and moral guidelines that the Thundercats brought to millions of televisions sets.  No offence to the hard work of mom and dad, but the Thundercats had a hand in shaping my moral development that they or other kid’s programming did not.  As Lion-O learned valuable life lessons from the ghost of Jaga,  so did I. I knew that patience, fortitude, and strength were all things to strive for, even if I didn’t quite know what they were while I was swinging around my plastic Swords of Omens.  I know I will continue through my life balancing what I find  just and fair until my own kids can learn these important lessons as they run around the house, yelling at the top of their lungs, “Thundercats, HO!” (Or find me completely unhip and crazy whenI dress as Lion-o for Halloween and they refuse to go trick or treating with me. And speaking of which, has the Philosophy of Thundercats been written yet? ).

I’m sure a whole chapter of my new Thundercats book could be dedicated to the interesting tidbit I picked up on my wife showed me while putting off writing researching this blog entry: The voice of Lion-O, Larry Kenney, is also the father of Kerri Kenney from MTV’s The State and Reno 911! fame.

Larry Kenney

Kerry Kenny-Silver

Dude, if my Dad were the voice of Lion-O you had better believe I would have an awesome personalized voice mail message, “You have reached Logan, the Lord of the Thundercats, and I am away from my phone right now fighting mutants or cruising for chicks in the thundertank, please leave a message after the beep.”  This would also be followed with using the Sword of Omens to screen my calls because the Lord of the Thundercats can’t be bothered with telemarketers or prank calls from Mumm-Ra.

So we have a new kittten named Snarf. Now if you don’t know the origin of that name, it’s from a cartoon in the 80’s about some alien cat-humans.

Imagine, for a moment, a conversation between two middle class Americans:

Mike:  Oh, hey man!  How the hell are ya?

Charlie:  I’m doing all right.  Just got out of work.  Hey!  Those are some really cool shoes.  Where did you get them?

Mike:  Thanks man.  I got them at this store downtown for twenty bucks.  Pretty cool, right?

All right, stop.  Every single one of you have had this conversation.  What I’m talking about is that when people acknowledge our fresh duds or kicks, we not only feel obliged to thank them for the compliment, but also we feel supplement our gratitude with information on how much money our clothes cost.  When we do this, it is almost always to let everyone know that while we might look super fresh, the dopest part of the clothing acquisition was the bargain.  We are quick to let everyone know that we appreciate being told we look great, but more importantly that we didn’t pay that much money for our look.

You very rarely hear people exclaiming, “Thanks man, I payed full price for it.”  That would be admitting defeat in several ways.  We, as a middle class, exhalt the almighty bargain for several reasons:

1) Sticking it to The Man – Middle class members have a very complicated relationship with The Man.  Synonyms to The Man include Authority, Multinational Corporations and any fiscal or social Superstructure.  We resent The Man because of his largely oppressive actions towards the underclass, favoring of the overclass, and that, despite all this, they make really cool stuff that we really, really want.  It is in our nature as middle class Americans to consume, but we also often resent the Superstructures and the products they spew out for our consumption because who doesn’t want to something the size of a pack of gum that can play every single song in existence. 

What better way then to stick it to The Man for his deviousness than to buy his products at a discount.  That will surely hinder your revenue stream!  Take that!  By purchasing The Man’s products at a discount, and letting people know that The Man is surely to be pissed at us, we receive social adulation from our likeminded peers while also still having a totally rockin’ iPod.

On a sidenote, for all you Apple users out there who put Apple stickers on your Priuses and walk around like their shit gives birth to puppies made out of angel orgamsms, did you know that your precious Apple Corporation outsources their manufacturing just like every other corporation based in the United States?  So, buying Apple products doesn’t make you unique or somehow better than PC users.  It’s just another multinational corporation with a particularly vitriolic and clever marketing strategy.  Plus there’s no right click button.  Wammy.

2) Evasive Vanity – Evasive Vanity allows for the consumer to be vain without people actually recognizing their vanity.  That is why the add on of, “I got it for… (insert lowballed price)” holds so much weight.  By attributing value to the product we purchased that will seem generally low to our peers we are sending the message that, “I like to buy things that make me look good, but I am not concerned enough about my appearance as to pay top dollar for it.  I like to look good as much as the average consumer.  Thus, I am in no way shallow or vain.”

3) Resentment of Wealth - Members of the middle class, especially middle class whites, often will come to resent their wealth.  My generation especially likes to enjoy the luxuries that wealth provides, but hold the knowledge of that wealth at arm’s length for one reason:  they haven’t earned it.  They are often reaping the benefits of the hard work of their parents so it is easy for them to slanderously address the evils of private property, working and evil corporations.

They feel that their relative opulence compromises their ability to identify with the underclass for whom they still strongly advocate, while also not being a member of its ranks.  By letting a peer know that they, as a consumer, did not indeed pay full price, it states, “I am not in possession of enough wealth to pay full price for this product.  Thus, I identify with notion to be left wanting; just like the poor people for whom I know what is best.”  This phenomenon depresses middle class people because a lot of them went to four year universities, studied liberal arts, got  really into Marx, Gramsci, and idolized countries with socialized medicine, but still enjoy the fruits that the free market and capitalism tend to spawn. 

To have money means an estangement with the struggle that most of the world engages in on a daily basis.  The Struggle is a theoretical construct to the middle class only.  This is why buying things for less than full price  is the illusion of being part of The Struggle, even if it is just for a moment.

4) You’re a Hipster – Hipsters are almost as bad as douchebags.  They are on opposite ends of the spectrum of obnoxious social groupings, but they go so far on either end of the spectrum that they begin to share similar qualities and just piss everyone off.  Hipsters are proselytizers of a kind of liberal postmodern neo-nihilist college educated ethos who sleep in coffins made of irony and independent record collections.  Hipsters are consumers, collectors, and critics of culture, but in no way contribute anything to it.  By having no real skill sets  or marginally original thoughts other than knowledge of music and obscure foreign films, the hipster must hide  his lack of tangible cultural and social contributions with a mustache he names Snarf and a fucking sweet fedora.  Hipsters might look something like this:

Please stick your genitals in a garbage disposal so you can never reproduce.  I hate you so much.  You give the left wing a bad name.  Shave, wear jeans that aren’t made for women, and stop pretending your taste in music is better than mine. 

Hipsters are notorious for their sense of irony, but it is a kind of their irony that really just means “makes you look like you eat paste for breakfast.”  They don’t fully understand true irony because they didn’t ascribe to the fascist structure of the modern education system that English 101 presented at Wesleyan.  

But hipsters are the epitome of touting their “cheap” clothing by routinely doing two things:  shopping at a Salvation Army store or Good Will Store though they often possess adequate disposable income to buy normally priced clothing.  This is a result of coming from a background of money that they undoubtably resent.

Hipsters shop at GW or SA stores to acquire “vintage” clothing that is very meticulously picked out which cultivates a look to their peers that conveys a very strange paradox, “I most certainly don’t care how I look, but I will spend hours making sure I look just the right way.”  It is very important to let everyone know that they hardly spent any money or time on their hyper-individualistic appearance.  Lots of money may not be spent on an outfit but if I may counter:

Time = Money.

Hipsters spend lots of time on their appearance.

Thus, hipsters spend lots of money on their appearance. 

What is just as common is the Surreptitious Hipster that will indeed spend lots of money on their “look”, but feel compelled to lie about it to deflect any suspicions of vanity or narcissism.

The only thing ironic about the hipster social grouping is that hipsters ascribe to a largely empathetic world view that supposedly champions the needs of the underclass, but will spend their money on exceptionally cheap clothing at stores established for the class they are supposedly helping.  By buying clothes there, it deprives clothing to the class they so do dutifully and often pretentiously campaign for.  Hipsters are also advocates for whales, medical marijuana, PBR and every citizen of Tibet.

*********************************************************************************************************

What I’m arguing is that this bargain boast is a phenomenon exclusive to middle class America where wealth is often not celebrated.  In the upper class wealth is… well it’s pretty celebrated.  That same sentence we’ve been examining might look something like this if both members were exceptionally wealthy, “Thanks man.  I got them downtown at this store for two hundred bucks.  Boom.  I love Fox News.   I would blow Ronald Reagan.  All poor people are lazy.”

I hope you all like the recent blog post.  Oh you really do?  You think the writing is amazing?  Well thank you.  I got it on the internet… for free.

Es un Fake, pero no pueden negar que esmuy bueno. Brad Pitt es Leon-O, Vin Diesel es Pantro, Hugh Jackman es Tygro (Tygra),… y Garfield es Snarf, jajaja.

http://www.starwlog.com/2009/09/23/trailer-de-la-pelicula-de-thundercats

One of many oddities from Snarf’s photo album..when she lived in Cayman.

Jan 2003 | Wildstorm

Art: Ed McGuiness | Jason Martin | Dave Stewart | Dustin Nguyen | Joyce Chin | Carrie Strachan | JJ Kirby | Carlos D’Anda | Alex Sinclair | Joaquim Dos Santos | Humberto Ramos | Ashley Wood | Kaare Andrews | Socar Myles | Jason Pearson | Dan Norton | Tony Avina | Ale Garza | Richard Friend | Chris Walker | Joe Phillips | Dario Brizuela | Jim Lee | Randy Mayor | Long Vo | Charles Park | Uden’s Sako
Text: Ford Lytle Gilmore
Cover: Arthur Adams | Carrie Strachan

This nice little book is a collection of brief bios of the several characters, vehicles, and items making up the Thundercats universe. They serve as a nice refresher to the universe and provide enough information to get those new to series up to speed. Each subject is accompanied by beautiful art by varying artists also making this a nice artbook.

The subjects appearing in this book are as follows:

• Thundercats (as a group)
• Tygra
• Mandora
• Lunatacs
• Hachiman
• Lion-O
• Mumm-Ra
• Grune
• Thunderkittens & Snarf
• Bengali, Lynx-O & Pumyra
• Thundertank & Fist Pounder
• Panthro & Cheetara
• Ratar-O
• Mutants & Castle Plundar
• Lion-O vs Mumm-Ra (Sword of Omens & Sword of Plundarr)
• Berserkers

This is really just another piece of collector’s swag for any Thundercats fan and hard to recommend as a purchase. It ended up in my collection only as I had everything Thundercats on my pull list at my LCS.

Man – I wish I was seven again.

Seven was a good age. No responsibilities, pancakes on the weekend, and Thundercats every morning like clock work. How I miss being seven….how I miss my good ol’ Thundercats!

I always wanted to be Cheetara, she was sexy, she was fast, and she was kick ass! Plus I secretly always thought that her and Lion-O would get married one day. Thus that really meant that me and Lion-O would be getting married. I had already planned our kitten’s names – Cheeto and Lioness. Yeah…pretty damn original for a seven year old. But all in all, I was obsessed with the cartoon – and really – who am I kidding. I’m still obsessed.

What’s happened to good cartoon shows like Thundercats!? Why did we let her slip through our fingers to end up on some dusty VHS shelf? Why didn’t we demand that it be reincarnated into the 21st century? I mean…with all the old 1980’s cartoon remakes coming out (X-men, Transformers, & G.I. Joe) aren’t we due for a Thundercats major motion picture? Some of you may scoff at the idea (I scoff sir, I scoff)…but you’re not fooling anyone if you say that you wouldn’t at least be the tiniest bit intrigued. So I say, bring back my cats (oh my God, I sound like a cat lady).

So I was flipping through some images of my Thundercats of long ago, and found some pretty awesome photos. Let’s call this section: MEMORY (for those of you that know Andrew Lloyd Webber, you know what I’m talking about)

Memory:

The Thundercats Logo

The Crew

 The Nemesis’

Home Sweet Home
 

The Lay of the Land

Making them Your Own

I could probably post pictures for hours people. Believe me, I can’t really just choose one! So I’m sure that I’ll have  a looooooooong running Thundercats series of posts. Hell I know for sure I could do days upon days just about Cheetara (the best character ever). So let it be known that I am waiting for the official Thundercats Movie. But for now, I’ll settle with what another fan created…..the most awesomest fake Trailer ever in the history of histories.

Thundercats will never die. Lesson 10 accomplished.

This morning marks two no-foot-down cycles to/from work (a journey of over 2.5 miles in city traffic) in row.
I should have leaped off the bike in the work car park, letting it trundle on ahead, with my arms raised, and dropped to my knees in a triumphant silent-roar.

Sorry bud, disqualified, your foot clearly touched the ground.

The more trivial the feat the more fulfilling in a way.

I guess because it’s not so important as to come back and bite you in the ass at a later date… or because it’s so insignificant it allows you to glean as much or little glory as you dare imagine up.

Three in a row tonight?… followed by a victory lap around the apartment building, hollering a squeal of victory over the cobblestones.

All I can say is ‘WOW!!!’. I would love for this to come true!

Whoever made this should be more important than a guy that makes fake movie trailers.

I do so being ill…well ill in combination with the unhealthy that is me.  Been sick for about a week…gross cough, cement in my sinuses…expanding, exploding, pressure causing, cement…can’t blow it or snarf it…just dangles there behind my left eye making filing a real joy as well as picking up Oliver, putting on my shoes…oh yeah, it’s pretty!

Get paid today…pay rent…call in my Rx which I hope Jim can pick up for me on Friday as I’m gonna pay 100% of the rent…tired of paying rent too!  HEY where’s my rent receipt for 2008 and 2007?!?  sure would like to get credit for paying it!  Pukes!  Yeah I’m sick…I hate everyone when I’m sick…alright not everyone…just the people that just normally piss me off…now I really despise their mere existence!

Got a quilt for hmm…Project Linus or maybe tiny angels…on the machine.  Bought a cool little baggie marked bright at the quilt shop full of chunks, strips and even some charm squares all brightly colored.  Made four 4-patch blocks…threw in some interesting borders and wrapped it all up with a 6.5 inch wide pastel rainbow striped border look way cute! baby or girlie!  probably girlie, there’s butterflies on some of the squares.

Got fabric piled and ready to cut for Benjamin Smiles pillow cases, received the labels for those in the mail from his mom.  Got a nice stack for at least 1 Home of the Brave quilt.  Some yummy flannel for Tiny Angels.  Wonderful pink and love shades for a heart baby quilt (will I ever finish the Heap of Sheep quilt I started last year?).  And some MEGA bright and sassy prints for a Project Linus quilt…now all I need is unlimited time, a pile of batting, a few spools of thread and postage!  Yeah all I need…

Tax lady called today…In about a week I can go sign my tax papers, pay $155 and off they’ll go…hopefully I’ll get my refund back real quick! I got plans!  Pay ALL the outstanding medical bills, pay the entire gas/electric bill, pay for my Jeep insurance for the next year, rent a massive roll off bin this spring to clean out the shed, entry way and anything in the house we’re tired of falling over, furniture: 3 chairs, and a couple floor pillows for the living room, wood to replace the floors in the bathroom and hallway, tile wall board to replace the walls in the shower, (sigh) and IF there’s anything left over (ha right) the fabric and quilt needs I have a list of out of Keepsake Quilting and send some $ to Tiny Angels to help with the shipping of the baby things.   Hmmm, we shall see…shan’t we?!?

*Sniff…Cough…hork…snarf*

Dude, this is fake but it’s AWESOME!!!!

duas coisas:
1. Alguém tem muito tempo nas mãos.
2. Vin Diesel de Panthro ficou muito legal…

This is a pretty effin rad fan trailer.  Finely photoshopped versions of the Thundercats make this probably better than anything Hollywood would come out with anyway.

The Cast is -

Brad Pitt from Troy as Lion-O

Vin Diesel from the Riddick movies as Panthro

Hugh Jackman as Wolverine as Tygra

Gigi Edgley from Farscape as Cheetara

The Spy Kids as WilyKit and WilyKat

And the CG Garfield as Snarf

The only thing that throws it off for me is the mix of the cartoon voices with the actual ones.  While the actual clips they found fit the motif I think it would have been good for them just to pick one voice per character.  Still — Skillfully done!

According to the Radicati Group, the number of email users worldwide will reach 1.6 billion in 2011 from an estimated 1.2 billion users in 2007 (393MM of these accounts are corporate users).  According to Internet World Stats, just under 1.5 billion people use the Internet today.  According to Nielsen//NetRatings, the digital media universe was approximately 550MM in May 2008.  However you cut the data, it’s striking that about as many people use email today as use the entire web.

Despite the fact that email is still the killer app on the internet, it seems like there is very little in the way of new businesses being formed around the space.  Sure, social networks are mainly a communications solution (as long as security issues are addressed).  And companies like The Mechanical Zoo, Xobni, and Twitter are doing some really interesting things in the communications space.  But it just seems like there is so much more to be done…

1.  Dynamic social networking.

There is much talk about “the social graph” in social media circles. The idea is that we all have relationships that exist in the real world, and firms like Facebook have worked to digitize the graph of those relationships.  I love this guiding principle.

However, real world graphs have far greater fidelity than their digital copies.  For example, let’s assume that everyone you know is a friend on Facebook.  You have a crazy weekend in Las Vegas at a friend’s bachelor party and you want to share the photos with friends.  That’s probably not something you want to share with co-workers, which is what happens today when you upload those photos to Facebook.  Instead, you discriminate and limit distribution (likely by email) to those who attended the event.  Or let’s say that you would like to ask someone for advice on getting a vasectomy?  Perhaps it’s the same guys as those from the bachelor party, or perhaps you want to save that one for your doctor?  How about advice on negotiating an acquisition?  You get the point.  Different people help you with different things and your relationships change over time.

It’s not as if I’m the first one to figure this out, of course.  But sites that have asked users to proactively decode the real social graph through explicit permissions have failed miserably — the vast majority of consumers will chose not to spend their time programming such a system.

About three years ago, Microsoft Research launched SNARF which aims to user actual communication history to help users organize things.  More recently, Xobni has gone much further in helping consumers understand more about their social graph derived from actual usage.

There are so many directions that this can go.  One thought — why not use the social graph to build a federated white list for anti-spam purposes?  In addition to the current techniques, such an approach could be used to assess the probability that a particular sender is legitimate and then the existing approaches could be modulated accordingly.

2.  Data mining.

In addition to the relationship data embedded in email there is, well, everything else.  I don’t even bother using desktop search anymore.  Email search (at least with Apple Mail) gives me 99% of what I need.  Most of what matters to me is either in the text of an email or is an attachment to an email.

Yet, it seems like the only time email is mined is as part of a legal discovery process.  Oh, and Gmail’s content indexing for ad targeting.  But there is so much more that can be done!  If something is really important to me, I share it as an URL or as an attachment through email or IM.  Aggregating that data would be immensely valuable for discovery (people who like this URL like that URL) and for search (use this data to separate signal from PageRank noise).

And things will get really exciting when my email data and metadata is mined to help personalize the web just for me.  Now that’s behavioral targeting.

3.  The consumer service bus (CSB).

According to Wikipedia, “a bus is a subsystem that transfers data between computer components inside a computer or between computers. Unlike a point-to-point connection, a bus can logically connect several peripherals over the same set of wires.”  I use the term consumer service bus (CSB) as a play on the enterprise service bus (ESB).

The idea is that, unlike today’s point-to-point email, CSBs “logically” connect entities with entities.  The first generation of CSBs follow the publish-subscribe model – Twitter, FriendFeed, Google Reader.  These systems pivot around sources to which I have subscribed (a person or an RSS feed) and send me a sequential list of everything these publishers put out.  But data volumes will soon grow out of control.  Today a very small percentage of the internet population use these services.  Once everyone I know is publishing a good chunk of what they do (publishing will need to be made a passive exercise for this to happen), consumers will drown in the noise.

Facebook’s News Feed is already picking the top ~10-15 “articles” for me from a sea of choices.  I would love to see a CSB emerge that could do the same thing for everything — summarize my favorite blogs and news sources (e.g., Techmeme-style), find the best video on the web (perhaps by email URL extraction from my social network), find the most important emails from my inbox, and let me know tha traffic on my commute home will be especially bad today (because the system has a feed from my calendar and has done a mashup with Yahoo! Maps).

It’s time for email innovation.

I have seen a huge number of startups in the advertising, search, and Facebook applications segments.  Surprisingly, there have been comparatively few in the communications area, despite the obvious opportunity for innovation.  I smell opportunity.

Sock from the television show Reaper totally looks like Snarf from the Thundercats cartoon

Submitted by Silverkat

Here’s an interview from Allhiphop.com with a good friend of mine Doug, about his line of watches. Flud (pronounced “flood” watches), is gaining steam and pleasing the masses.

I remember it like it was yesterday, when he came up with the idea for the watches and showed me the first proposal and early designs. He had many different challenges presented when making them, so I’m glad that the first batch of watches are being received well. I’ve seen personally how people fiend for these things.

Looking forward to the second run.

Stay tuned for the interview with him on the origin of “Tableturns” and what its like oft being uncredited for his slice of the global phenomenon now known as “Turntablism”.

Hopefully he’ll kick some poetry as well. Maybe not.

Carlito Roc

Tck Krew

We all know by now that more than just the music industry is in trouble with this economy. The fashion industry is also being hard hit, and many independent lines have been forced to cease operations in the past year.

Hardly a time to start a new company… but the team at Flϋd Watches is in process of defying the odds.

Launched in 2007, Flϋd set out on a mission “to create unique, fresh watches for the casual and streetwear scene without the pretentiousness or price tag.”

A great concept indeed, but will the budding accessories company be able to stay fresh in a stale market?

We spoke with Doug Cohen and Mel Peralta to find out what makes Flϋd tick.

AllHipHop.com: A lot of people who try to come into the urban realm with the accessories sometimes go a little overboard, but there’s a certain maturity to these watches. Talk a little bit about the concept behind the designs.

Doug Cohen: Basically I’m a long vet in the Hip-Hop industry in different ways, and the music really lends itself to going into fashion. I didn’t want to do straight clothing, because everybody does clothing and like you said, a lot of the time you see accessories even from clothing brands and it’s just so over the top. You’ll see some of these generally accepted urban clothing brands, they’ll make a watch or a belt or something and it’s just so crazy. It really doesn’t speak to me in any type of way.

I always loved watches, and I really wanted to do something that had that connection where it’s like, I can get fly in the way that we do and rock this watch – where the monetary value isn’t all that crazy but the style is where the value was. You can match or wear something that reflects what you were feeling on that specific day in a way that you don’t [normally] see. There’s no place to buy a watch that matches with your kicks or represents that style or idea that’s really prevalent in the way we dress at the moment.

AllHipHop.com: You can rock them casually with any jeans or whatever you have, or you could also have a button down and a jacket and still wear the watch and it’s still classy. Were you intending to be able to draw in a more mature Hip-Hopper?

Doug Cohen: Yeah, I think in general what we’re trying to do is have something that you can rock with whatever. I don’t think that everything we have is for every style of dress at whatever moment. But we definitely wanted to have that level of versatility where the watches were at home with whatever you were wearing, and moving forward with our new stuff that is coming out in September.

I think it’s even more at home in different elements and it really takes everything to an evolutionary step, so that you can rock it pretty much anywhere at any time – be it with some Jordans or a suit – and it’ll really fit in whatever steez you’re trying to go with.

AllHipHop.com: Talk a little bit about the world of accessories. Do you find it more challenging to work with clothing?

Doug Cohen: I would say they both have their difficulties. Clothing, the market is already established for it. The stores are open, people are there, they know what works and what doesn’t. Whereas with accessories, specifically with watches, I think we’re trailblazing something that there’s nobody else really doing what we’re doing, which helps a lot, but at the same time makes it real difficult because we’re the ones that have to figure out our own directions on the road.

That’s real difficult, and in general accessories are more difficult in the sense that to do watches takes a greater financial commitment, which is especially difficult for an independent company. With clothing you could do a couple dozen and keep it moving and with watches, you can only [manufacture] overseas, you have to do real high minimums and there’s a lot more technically involved which makes it much more complicated.

But again, because we’re out there trailblazing, it’s also a huge bonus for us because a lot of people are open to talking to us and working. There’s not really anybody else doing what we’re doing right now.

AllHipHop.com: Because you have the turntable and the record watches [33-1/3], have you had any DJs or radio personalities that have been looking for them, or have you had any of those people want to co-brand and get a watch with their name on it?

Doug Cohen: Yeah we’ve definitely laced a lot of cats. My background is DJ’ing. I know a ton of DJs and I’ve laced everybody from Grandmaster Flash to Rob Swift. I was just up at G-Unit Radio and I laced my man Whoo Kid. We’ve definitely run the gamut of original DJs, innovators and inventors to the hardcore turntablist and the radio personality.

The DJs are definitely open to the watch. I named the watch TableTurns because I used to do this open turntable event called TableTurns, and it was sort of like my tribute to that element of my life and that aspect of what I used to do to kind of connect the two worlds a little bit.

Mel Peralta: One thing we were talking about is the designs, and watches themselves don’t really lend themselves to pretentiousness. It’s not biting another style. You know how you get a certain kind of rapper that will come in and his style will just f**k up the game? Honestly, it will be so hot that everybody kind of patterns themselves, their style and flow after it.

I don’t think you get any of that with Flud, I think everybody appreciates authenticity on whatever level; whether it’s clothing, accessories, rhyming or DJing. I think that’s one of the huge things that’s kind of propelling Flud forward.

AllHipHop.com: With the economy the way that it is right now, do you guys feel like your demographic might be affected by you having to alter your price plan or your marketing plan over the next couple of years?

Doug Cohen: I think for Flud, we came in the game almost at a good time economy wise because you could buy a $500 watch, and I’m into watches so I’m into real complicated mechanical watches like a Hautlence or a Richard Mille or something like that. These watches cost more than houses at some level and to me you can go and buy a Bulova, or a Movado watch in that price range and it doesn’t really say that much about you.

Whereas with us we’re really trying to say you can express yourself with the wrist without spending all of that money and the economy up to this point hasn’t really been affected because we’re trying to say these watches are inexpensive. Everything we have is under $100, we’re definitely gonna stay that way for a long time, and again the concept is really trying to bring people something they can afford and still have panache, and a level of respectability and props to it.

So if anything, because people and retailers are being a little more cautious with their money, we’re coming in at a good fair price and I think it’s been sort of a non-factor to us, just in terms of that on those kinds of levels.

AllHipHop.com: Where can people find the watches?

Doug Cohen: Online you can go to karmaloop.com, our site FludWatches.com, KeepItClassic.com, GridNC.com, Flymode.com, also UrbanOutfitters.com carries some stuff. In retail we’re in all the Man Alive stores out there for everybody in the Midwest, they carry a lot of stuff, we’re in Up Against The Wall, we’re definitely in Metropark.

AllHipHop.com: I love Metropark!

Doug Cohen: Big shoutout to them because they were one of the first companies to really come in and support so we definitely appreciate them for it. Boutiques around the country, and on the site we got all the stores to get it from.

AllHipHop.com: Is there anything else you want people to know about the company?

Doug Cohen : We got this line, and our new line launching in September which is definitely real fire.

Link

I never really looked at it this way, but now that I did, I will never see superheroes the same way again. Grease up your rear Robin, because Batman’s about to park the Batmobile in the Batcave.

There are a lot of people in America today. That’s why each week, The Panda Page breaks down the anonymity of our great country with a series called, A Field Guide to the People of America.

Last week we met College Revolutionaries and Guidos. But today, we meet the online phenomenon: LOLcats. (Retardus Potsmokerus)

So let’s get to know them, shall we?

1. What They Look Like

LOLcats can most easily be identified by their cat-like features and colorful one-line captions. The captions are usually based on something relative to what a human might say or do in a given situation [as shown in Fig 1.1].

Meanwhile, LOLcats creators are renowned for their ravishing good looks. Which are very attractive to the opposite sex [pictured in Fig 1.2].

LOLcat creators can also be spotted for their impeccable fashion style [illustrated in Fig 1.3].

Other less common traits among LOLcat creators include highly developed facial hair [see figure 1.4].

2. Where To Find Them

When their creators aren’t photographing LOLcats doing zany things around the house, they can be found on ICanHazACheezburger.Com, RatherGood.Com, or any other website that challenges the intellectual boundaries of mankind [see figure 2.1 below].

Other locations to spot LOLcats and their creators include the office desks of lonely women (next to the hunky firemen caledar and Dilbert cartoon strips).

3. Hobbies

The most popular LOLcats hobbies include acting like humans and speaking phonetically [pictured below in Fig 3.1].

Other common hobbies among LOLcats include being adorable [illustrated in Fig 3.2].

Meanwhile, when LOLcat creators are not researching Quantum Physics or Genetic Engineering, they’re publishing best-selling novels and attending Mensa meetings [see Fig 3.3].

4. Approaching Them in the Wild

Now that you’ve met the LOLcats and the people that make them, why not say hi when you see them? Although, a warning on approaching LOLcats: they look cute and playful in their photos, but they are violently scared of flash photography. So they will scratch immediately.

However, their creators are extroverted social butterflies and are more than willing to engage in intellectually stimulating conversation. So feel free to approach them. But be warned, they only speak in Cute.

And most importantly: HAVE FUN

-Nick

Há três anos vivo na Holanda. O mais incrível é que não consigo lembrar-me exatamente em que dia cheguei aqui. Procurei no diário daquela época. No dia dois de maio de dois mil e quatro escrevi que naquela noite eu viajaria e veria meu amado novamente. E também que seria a última noite dormindo na casa dos meus pais antes de me mudar. Sei que viajei durante a noite, mas será que a emoção não me permitiu ser clara? Cadê minha objetividade obsessiva?

A próxima historinha no meu diário data de seis de maio. Mais uma vez, sem nenhuma pista concreta da data precisa que desembarquei no Schiphol. Não sei ao certo a quais datas me refiro quando escrevi que Snarf (foto ao lado) sofreu, por dois dias, o efeito das gotinhas de tranqüilizante para que ele relaxasse por algumas das pelo menos doze horas de viagem e check in/out.

Me lembro que o gato não apareceu na esteira de bagagem (felizmente). Mas só o encontrei graças aos miadinhos deseperados e a um amontoado de crianças em volta dele, cheias de curiosidade. Ele estava dentro da caixinha de viagem, atrás de um balcão, sem a companhia de outros animais ou funcionários do aeroporto. Não precisei apresentar nenhum papel para tê-lo novamente ao meu lado e achei estranho: “alguém poderia tê-lo roubado”, pensei.

Pouco me lembro desdes dias turbulentos de quando a gente imigra. Tenho apenas uma vaga lembrança de ter visto, na televisão, a Rainha e o primeiro ministro, juntamente com uma imensidão de gente, guardando dois minutos de silêncio, às oito da noite, em memória às vítimas da segunda guerra mundial. Lembro que meus olhos ficaram molhados. Achei bonito. Meio século depois, as atrocidades da guerra ainda estavam frescas na mente daquele povo todo na Dam. Esses dois minutos de silêncio são feitos, anualmente, em quatro de maio. Pode ser que tenha chegado na Holanda nessa tarde.

No dia seguinte, também lembro que fomos até o rio Amstel, assistir ao concerto da Libertação. Os músicos da orquestra tocavam dentro de um barco ou de um palco montado na água, não me lembro exatamente. As ruas em torno do rio – que dá o nome à cidade – , bem como os barcos em volta da orquestra, apinhados de gente. Depois do concerto, lembro de termos caminhado em silêncio até em casa – naquela época morávamos bem pertinho do Amstel. Em 5 de maio de 1945, a Alemanha e o Japão deixaram os Países Baixos em paz. O cinco de maio será comemorado no Amstel da mesma forma amanhã (e também na Museumplein, além dos diversos festivais de música pop no país inteiro).

Estas datas históricas me ajudam a lembrar da minha pequena e curta existência na Holanda, embora nem a Rainha nem o primeiro ministro saibam que dia eu cheguei aqui. Quem sabe, com certeza, é minha mãe, que talvez lembre-se até os minutos exatos que duraram nossa despedida no aeroporto, em Guarulhos.

I started to write for audiences in earnest back in 1999. So 8 years. Just under a decade. My goal this whole while: Bust chuckles.

I always think what I write is the funniest thing since me & MG TANK stole that Cadillac convertible and drove it into a swimming pool in what appeared to be Atlantic City. But that’s another story.

I’m not sure if readers share in my giggle fits over every word I write. I like to think so — but by the end of a 70-odd sleepless hour mixed-salt amphetamine binge I really don’t give a hoot. I like to laugh. And my witty snips crack me the fuck up. My hammer-sledge one line funny smack-downs barrel blast my skinny ass to the floor.

Ya know what? My life sucks. I’ve been raped by men & beaten by women. My teeth are two-thirds rotted out of my head. I am intractably unemployable. Been homeless for over a decade of my adult life. Two and one half years — my longest run ever — this time around.

Yep. I’ve said it before and I say it once more: It sucks to be me.

But so what?

I get to write about whatever I want for no reason at all other than to make myself laugh. What luck. I’d be dead if it weren’t for that. No shit.

Die or laugh. Those are the two real choices I’m posed with most days. Laugh or die.

Today I had a third choice. Die. Laugh. Or bask in my greatest to-date literary accomplishment. 8 long years in the making. A pinnacle moment; truly the feat I’ve strove for the long while; since I bought my first lap-top after I made $10,000 cash in a weekend selling freeze-dry alien turds at Woodstock ‘99. Another different story. One of my all time favorites though!!

This is the story about one thing my writing — a pro chuckle extractor testament — had yet to do. Until last night that is. The very first time ever that a reader has…

…In his own words (left as a [perfectly smashing] comment to the previous post):

Jay Logic Feb 5th, 2007 at 10:28 pm

Brilliant! I just laughed a piping hot Vanilla latte out of my nose, and all over my girlfriend’s computer monitor!”

I am shit-tickle happy. One of those moments, when I read that, where I could genuinely say “Well Hot Damn — it rocks being Mike E!!

In all these years of finger-tips ground tenaciously into my own little world that lives inside my computer’s keys — listening for the secret to make people laugh so hard they fall down — I have never once, until yesterday, caused a reader to Snarf.

Happy Snarf Day To Me! Happy Snarf Day To Me!!!

No but seriously. I hope it was awesome dude! To celebrate: Jay Logic gets to be the first ever open container speedWay blog Reader of the Week!

It & 3 bucks will get you a Bud Draft or 20 MG’z of addaboyz or a pouch of Top Menthol rolling tobacco!

Well congrat-ya-fucking lations!! You came to the right speedWay.